With the palace at the centre facing south, place the ancestral temple on its left (east) and the altar of soil and grain on its right (west); put the court in front and the market behind, each one fu (a hundred paces) square.
“Left” and “right” are the ruler’s, who sits facing south. The pairing of the ancestors (the dynasty) with the soil and grain (the land) flanking the ruler became the defining sign of a legitimate capital. Ming and Qing Beijing preserve it exactly: the Imperial Ancestral Temple stands east and the Altar of Soil and Grain west of the approach to the Forbidden City, and Seoul copied the arrangement with Jongmyo and Sajikdan on either side of the Joseon palace.
Give the hipped roof (wudian) to the highest halls, the hip-and-gable (xieshan) to the next, and the gabled roofs, overhanging (xuanshan) and flush (yingshan), to lesser buildings and houses; double the eaves for the very highest.
double wudian > double xieshan > wudian > xieshan > xuanshan > yingshan
Give a hall an odd number of bays across the front (three, five, seven, nine or eleven) so that the central axis passes through a bay and a doorway, never through a column.
Lay out the royal city as a square of nine li on each side, with three gates in each wall and, within, nine roads running north–south and nine east–west, each wide enough for nine chariots abreast.
side = 9 li · 3 gates × 4 sides · 9 jing + 9 wei · road width = 9 gui (tracks)
Find true north and south with a plumb-lined post and the shadows of sunrise and sunset, checked by the pole star; then turn the principal hall of every compound to face south.
Make the avenues within the city nine chariot-tracks wide, the ring road that runs inside the wall seven tracks, and the roads in the country outside the gates five.
avenue (jing tu) 9 gui · ring road (huan tu) 7 gui · country road (ye tu) 5 gui · 1 gui = 8 chi
Set the ridge of the palace gates at five zhi, the corner towers of the palace at seven, and the corner towers of the city wall at nine, a zhi being one zhang (ten feet) in height.
palace gate : palace corner : city corner = 5 : 7 : 9 zhang (≈ 11.5 : 16 : 21 m)
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Temple on the left, altar on the right; court in front, market behind”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/zuo-zu-you-she. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.